KØHB wrote:
Just finished another annual running to the two-weekend Sweepstakes contest (one
weekend Morse, one weekend phone).
cut

The numbers below show the percentage of my QSO's which had a recieved "check"
in the current and 10 previous years (i.e., this year I counted "95" thru"05",
last year "94" through "04", etc.)

(Tabular info best viewed in 'fixed width' font)

Year CW% Phone% Combined%

2001 7.4% 24.0% 17.5%
2002 6.9 18.8 13.5
2003 7.0 14.8 10.9
2004 4.5 14.0 8.7
2005 4.0 14.0 9.9

As I mentioned, it's no surprise that newcomer contesters are more likelyto be
on phone, but the really scary part is that the overall percentages (regardless
of mode) in the "licensed-in-the-last-10-years" are dropping so dramatically,
almost halved in just 5 years.

If the trend of "newcomers active in contesting" is a representative subset of
"newcomers active on the air in general" (as I suspect it is) then the future of
our hobby has a rather disturbing look.

One I suspect you are wrong

few newcomers I know of and by the standard you are using I am one
still are that interested in contesting, personaly I looks at and tend
to chuckle I also hear the tales of the that try and get flamed for not
"doing it right" as if the flamers was born with this knowledge or
receieved it as a implant

What are we (all of us) going to do to reverse this ominous trend?

inventing better contests might be a start

--
73, de Hans, K0HB
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